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Anime Jason 
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Member Since: Sun Sep 12, 2004
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In Reply To
HH

Subj: He's just the director.
Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 at 12:54:08 pm EDT (Viewed 763 times)
Reply Subj: Tell that to Spielberg's lawyers.
Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 at 11:48:03 am EDT (Viewed 2 times)




    Quote:
    Well, as I was writing this (and the five bits I haven't posted yet) I found myself naturally playing Liu Xi as the kind one.


She's always nice unless someone makes her angry, but even then all she does is curse and then feel bad about it.



    Quote:
    Vinnie's never been good at relationships.


I guess he has to start somewhere.



    Quote:
    No, they'd probably want to set Slithis up with one of Vinnie's sisters (probably Golgotha, she's got a thing for necromancers; besides Threnody tends to scare men and Lucifera's a bit young, and has just started as a freshman at Paradopolis U.). So far none of the young De Soths have settled down and started breeding the next generation of evil sorcerers.


That might actually benefit Liu Xi in the long run.



    Quote:
    Again, my problem with using Faite or any all-powerful intervention type is that it kills drama. It's why Odin needs to enter the Odinsleep every ten minutes and why eventually lots of these uber-parent or amazing mega-prodigies have to either die (c.f. Marvel's Zeus & Odin, Dumbledore) or go off to another plance of existence or something.


At the moment Faite is on a personal journey of her own. It would take a lot to encourage her to give that up and go back to being detached from humanity again. She was getting very lonely.



    Quote:
    The point is that for every crisis or problem in the Parodyverse there's dozens of characters who could swoop in and fix it - but then there's no story; so we have to assume that there are unknowable cosmic reasons why they don't.


Noted.



    Quote:

      Quote:
      That also means she's more likely to make changes that help out friends, because they will understand them and not attempt to reverse them.



    Quote:
    To me that reads "Faite's friends have a get-out-of-jail-free card and can't ever accomplish anything on their own without an all-powerful safety net".


Actually let me clarify that better. I used the words "more likely" to be very specific.

Already Faite is very reluctant to tamper with reality in general because it's dangerous, AND because regular people have the ability to undo and derail her changes over time, since the memory of what was isn't erased and people tend to want things the way they anticipate them to be. That makes it very likely that she'll interfere directly unless she believes the benefit greatly outweighs the effort and danger - like if the Parodyverse was in for imminent destruction, permanent negative change (like the Moderator saga), or damage.

But out of that very unlikeliness, she's *more* likely to change something for a friend, if the danger is very limited, because a friend will understand the change and the price that comes with it, and won't resist or try to reverse the changes. Not because she wants to always be there to change the world for a friend.



    Quote:
    To put it another way: the Hooded Hood, being designed as an archvillain and therefore being more powerful and with wider-ranging abilities than the average heroic protagonist, theoretically has "do anything" powers. I try to be very careful to show that there are consequences to what he does and therefore limits to them. I restrain myself from having the Hood walk in to every situation and interfere just to show how cool he is - it's get old fast. I try to make sure that if the Hood's there it's for a solid storytelling reason, otherwise he just becomes a deus et machina and modern audiences require proper set-up and justification for such endings.


The Hood has more power than Faite simply because he can take people's memories along with the changes. If Faite rearranges a town, the townspeople will likely be angry even if it's for a positive purpose, and their memories of the way the town was will prompt them to try and change it back over time. If the Hooded Hood makes the same change, people will believe it's the way it always was, and offer no resistance. He also has the ability to go back and erase any signs of danger that might jeopardize the changes, which Faite can't do.



    Quote:
    All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I don't really want to write Faite or any other mega-power like the Chronicler or the Family of the Pointless against another mega-power like the Void Spectre. It basically gets down to a theoretical abilities pissing content. I'll just skirt round that stuff as usual and folks can fill in their own blanks as they please.


Any time I've had Faite do any kind of activity except for talking to people and going to school - and it's only been twice - it's been a highly dramatic scene that looks and feels dangerous. For instance if someone made Faite angry enough for her to take them on directly, you'd see the building split in half, the entire city of Paradopolis shake with tremors, etc.

I try to give the impression of just how hazardous it is, how much nature abhors her interference, and what happens when something that's an aberration to Earthly matters starts releasing lots of power.

Even when Lara Night really unleashes, it usually involves an explosion (super-heated air), lots of noise, rubble, and dust, and scared or shocked bystanders. She's not nearly as powerful as say, Donar or Liu Xi, but her power over energy is supposed to be traumatic, dangerous, and sometimes scary. Kind of how you'd imagine the most severe lightning storm you've ever seen hitting very close by.







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